Four arrested in Nintendo sting

More than 60 000 pirated copies of Nintendo game consoles were seized during raids in New York and New Jersey, reports Associated Press.

Four people were arrested in an FBI sting operation when they offered to sell pirated versions of games such as Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt and Baseball to FBI agents posing as gaming thieves.

The four are suspected of importing more than 280 000 illegal video game consoles into the US between September and December 2004.

The National Geographic Society and IBM have launched a five-year research initiative to trace the migratory history of the human species.

The Genographic Project will use sophisticated laboratory and computer analysis of DNA contributed by hundreds of thousands of people, including indigenous peoples and members of the general public, to map how the Earth was populated.

Led by National Geographic explorer-in-residence Spencer Wells, a team of international scientists and IBM researchers will collect genetic samples, analyse results and report on the genetic roots of modern humans.

With funding from the Waitt Family Foundation, the scientists will set up 10 centres around the world and study more than 100 000 DNA samples from indigenous populations. Researchers say the resulting public database will contain one of the largest collections of human population genetic information ever assembled and will serve as an unprecedented resource for geneticists, historians and anthropologists.

Samsung Electronics has been elected to the board of directors of the WiMax Forum to help bring the Korean WiBro wireless broadband standard in line with its American WiMax counterpart, reports ExtremeTech.

WiBro has been confined to Korea, using the 2.3GHz to 2.4GHz band, but Samsung sees it as a bridge between traditional WiFi and cellular technologies.

Experts say if WiMax is to succeed, the WiMax and WiBro standards must reach some accord. The report says placing Samsung officials on the WiMax board may help to bring about a merging of the technologies.

SAS Institute has unveiled an interim release of Version 9 of its BI Enterprise Server, Web Report Studio which InfoWorld reports will offer non-technical business users access to a deep set of predictive analytics data.

SAS says there are 110 new enhancements mainly targeted at broadening SAS`s reach within the enterprise. Company CEO Jim Goodnight says SAS is targeting key competitors such as Cognos and Business Objects. "This is BI for the masses," Goodnight said.

However, the report quotes experts as saying businesses do not need another toolbox, but are now looking for more domain-specific analytics that demand an application approach that is tied deeply into specific problems in the business.